Thirteen NFL teams have never had a Black head coach. Here’s one franchise’s story.

A flagship franchise in the league, the New York Giants reflect a process in which some say unconscious bias remains unchecked

Three days before Brian Flores was scheduled to interview with the New York Giants for their head coaching vacancy in January, he says he received an unexpected text message from New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick.

Black Out

This football season, The Washington Post is examining the NFL’s decades-long failure to equitably promote Black coaches to top jobs despite the multibillion-dollar league being fueled by Black players.

In the text, Belichick seemingly congratulated Flores, his former assistant coach, on hearing he would be offered the Giants’ job, one of the most coveted positions in the NFL. According to Flores, Belichick had mistaken him for a different Brian — Brian Daboll, the offensive coordinator of the Buffalo Bills who also previously worked for Belichick. The implication of the errant text was that the Giants had made their decision before a final interview with Flores. The day after Flores spoke with the team at its headquarters, the Giants announced they were hiring Daboll, who is like every other head coach in the team’s 97-year history in at least one regard: He is White.

Flores, who is Black, included the text exchange as part of his landmark race-discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and its teams, specifically naming the Giants and two other franchises and accusing them of holding “sham” interviews with Black candidates, allegations the Giants called “disturbing and simply false.” The class-action suit has cast a sharp spotlight on the NFL and notably on the Giants, one of its most storied franchises and also one of 13 that have never employed a Black full-time head coach.

An examination of the Giants’ hiring practices, based on interviews with more than two dozen coaches, former employees, agents, executives and industry experts, indicates the path that led to Daboll’s selection was not unusual. Those interviewed spoke of an insular organization that, while not overtly racist, does little systemically to mitigate unconscious bias that disadvantages Black coaches. They described a process built on personal connections and referrals from overwhelmingly White networks, with largely White hiring panels and little accountability on diversity — a direct contrast to what diversity and inclusion experts consider best practices.

Coming off the team’s fifth straight losing season, Giants owner John Mara was determined to find the man who could revitalize his $6 billion franchise. He and other team leaders — including his brother Chris, a team executive; co-owner Steve Tisch; and General Manager Joe Schoen — interviewed a handful of candidates, and Mara trusted his leadership team.

Since Tim Mara, John’s grandfather, founded the team by paying a $500 admittance fee in 1925, the Giants have operated under the family’s direction, leaning on their own instincts and handpicked advisers. That’s the way John has handled the family business since his father, Wellington Mara, died in 2005.

From the outside, the Giants appear to be a franchise where a Black coach could thrive. John Mara is a member of the league’s workplace diversity committee, and in 2007 he hired Jerry Reese to be the third Black general manager in NFL history. But to some who have had close dealings with the franchise, it was no surprise when its 20th head coach ended up looking similar to the first 19. They saw a business devoid of the kinds of protocols that are common in many large corporations but curiously are largely lacking in the NFL, which despite team owners’ enormous wealth and power is a largely decentralized operation consisting of 32 independent franchises that often conduct themselves more like mom-and-pop shops than billion-dollar entities.

Marc Ross, who worked in the Giants’ front office from 2007 to 2017, said that when Mara, who is White, pictures a leader of his team, there’s “no question” he imagines a White man. Ross, who is Black and now an executive with the upstart XFL, said he does not consider Mara to be racist, but he believes such bias has held back Black leaders across the league.

“There’s inherent and unconscious biases,” said Ross, a onetime candidate for the team’s general manager role who noted the franchise treated him well. “I heard that tons when I did my GM interviews: ‘We thought you were amazing. You’re outstanding. You’ll be a GM one day. We just felt comfortable with this guy.’ … And I think Black candidates, Black coaches just don’t get that benefit of the doubt of ‘We feel more comfortable.’ Why not? Because these owners are used to being around certain people and they’re comfortable with certain people.”

[Perspective: NFL owners are committed to diversity — until it’s their turn to make a hire]

The Giants denied Flores’s allegations. Pat Hanlon, the team spokesman, said the company actively seeks “diverse candidates to be interviewed by a diverse interview panel that represents a cross-section of our existing employees and community.”

Hanlon said the team does its own research “based on our observations, results and track record of candidates and references” and uses lists compiled by the league office as well as conversations with the Fritz Pollard Alliance, an organization dedicated to increasing diversity in the NFL.

“We strongly believe that racial diversity, including among our most senior coaching and executive ranks, makes us a stronger and better organization,” Hanlon said, adding that the organization has participated in diversity initiatives in the past. “John Mara’s leadership on the NFL’s Diversity Committee is a direct reflection of the organization’s commitment to creating more diversity within the Giants organization and the league as a whole.”

Mara declined an interview request through Hanlon, citing Flores’s lawsuit. But in the past, he has acknowledged the Giants’ history of never employing a Black head coach.

LEFT: John Mara's family has owned the Giants since the franchise was founded by his grandfather in 1925. (Seth Wenig/AP) RIGHT: Mara's Giants have hired four head coaches since 2016. (Seth Wenig/AP)

“It’s certainly something I’m aware of,” Mara said in January at the outset of the Giants’ latest coaching search. “At the end of the day, we want to get the right person. I think we have a good, diverse group of candidates right now and will make a decision based on who we think will be the best person to lead us in the future.”

In his first season, Daboll is off to a successful start, leading the Giants to a 7-3 record. Still, the team’s previous selections of unproven White leaders who went on to amass unimpressive records supported The Washington Post’s larger analysis of Black coaches’ roles in the NFL, which shows White coaches are given chances to lead teams through a more diverse set of paths than Black coaches.

[Key findings from ‘Black Out,’ The Post’s series on Black NFL coaches]

Mara, whose previous three full-time coaching hires compiled a record of 32-61, and the organization have a long line of supporters who defend the team’s choices. They point to Reese, who helped the team to two Super Bowl titles, as proof that Mara champions Black leaders. And they say Mara and the Giants long have been at the forefront of discussions on how to diversify teams and improve the Rooney Rule.

For a franchise that long has been a pillar of the league, the absence of a Black head coach hasn’t gone unnoticed. Mara is one of the team owners whom NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell often leans on for counsel on league matters or in times of crisis, so some coaches and officials view the Giants’ hiring record as a missed opportunity — and a symbol of the league’s broader failures.

“It says it all,” said Grambling State University Coach Hue Jackson, who is Black and previously served as coach of the Oakland Raiders and Cleveland Browns. “I give kudos to Pittsburgh, because they’ve done it. Mike Tomlin has done a tremendous job. Pittsburgh, where the Rooney Rule started, wasn’t afraid. Now you’re talking about New York, another one of these flagship organizations, and they have not done it — ever.”

Along with his place on the NFL’s workplace diversity committee, Mara is chair of the powerful NFL Management Council’s executive committee, which handles collective bargaining. Aside from a lack of diversity among his own coaching hires, some question why Mara has not done more to promote equal opportunity from one of the NFL’s most influential perches.

“He’s got more power than, theoretically, anyone,” said one person closely connected to the league’s dynamics, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a team owner candidly. “Why hasn’t John Mara been the one to stand up? And actually call for some sort of accountability when it comes to diversity or any of this stuff, right? I mean, does he act like the chairman of the board? No.”

In their apparent lack of intentionality, the Giants serve as a study of how institutional bias restricts opportunity. The NFL’s power brokers may act without malice, but in neglecting to address their own blind spots, their actions are just as detrimental to progress, according to critics.

Easily America’s most popular sports league, the NFL often is viewed as a monolith headquartered on New York’s Park Avenue that negotiates 10-figure media rights contracts and employs 32 head coaches and hundreds of players. In reality, the league is a collective of 32 disparate billion-dollar companies, each with its own history and all operated independently with their own approach and style on everything from marketing to hiring.

Every offseason, the NFL doesn’t fill roughly six to eight head coaching vacancies; rather, roughly six to eight companies — interconnected but independent — seek to make one highly visible hire apiece. The league offers few guidelines for how such hires should be made, and the lack of a standardized and transparent process creates the potential for myriad problems with diversity, corporate experts say.

Within the industry, many say the Giants’ hiring record is its own evidence — and that the organization has built a reputation that some say wards away Black leaders looking to rise. One coaching agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his clients from retribution, said associates within the league warned him against sending clients to interview with New York.

“When we did the Giants interview, we were told by multiple people not to do it,” the agent said. “[They said:] ‘It was a joke interview. They’re not going to hire a Black head coach. They’re just not.’ But a Black coach can’t turn down an interview: ‘He had an interview with the Giants and didn’t take it? Who does he think he is?’ ”

A revolving door of coaches

After the 2015 season, when they went 6-10 and missed the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season, the Giants forced out Tom Coughlin, who had twice won the Super Bowl over his dozen seasons in New York. For the first time since Wellington Mara’s death, John Mara would lead a coaching search.

Internally, offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo became an immediate favorite to be Coughlin’s successor, and reports emerged that McAdoo and Jacksonville Jaguars assistant Doug Marrone were leading the pack. Ross said McAdoo’s ascent was an open secret in the Giants’ facility. Quarterback Eli Manning liked working with him, and the Giants long had preferred continuity with their personnel.

“It was a typical ‘This is our guy, and we’re going to hire him. It doesn’t matter what anyone else does in an interview. This is who we want, and that’s it,’ ” Ross said. “Far too often, that’s what has been happening. The Rooney Rule was supposed to open it up, but I think what we’ve seen is, despite that, it just hasn’t.”

At the time, Jackson also had agreed to interview with the Giants, and he said he believes he would have had a “legitimate shot” at the job, a sentiment shared by John Wooten, then chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance.

But the day before Jackson’s scheduled interview in New York in January 2016, the Browns offered him their head coaching position. With a plane reserved to whisk him to meet with the Giants, Jackson instead accepted the job in Cleveland, in part because of his familiarity with the AFC North, where he had been offensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals.

With Jackson preempting his interview, the Giants talked to only one Black candidate: then-Detroit Lions defensive coordinator Teryl Austin. Now the Steelers’ defensive coordinator, Austin has interviewed 11 times for head coaching positions without getting hired.

“Maybe I’m not what the owners see when they look in the mirror and they see leadership positions,” Austin told the Associated Press last year. Austin and his agent, Eric Metz, declined to comment for this story.

In the 32-team NFL, seven franchises besides the Giants have never hired a Black head coach in any fashion, and five others have employed only a Black interim coach. Some can point to a lack of turnover thanks to the long, successful tenures of certain coaches. Belichick has been in charge of the Patriots since 2000, and John Harbaugh has coached the Baltimore Ravens since 2008.

In contrast, the Giants have hired four coaches since 2016 — one every other season. All were White, and none arrived with a résumé that made them stand out when compared with their Black peers.

13 NFL franchises haven't had a Black full-time head coach

Since 1990, those 13 teams have had 90 full-time coaches. None of them were Black, and just three of them were not White. Of those teams' 22 interim coaches, eight of them were Black.

Black:

White:

Other races:

Head coach

Head coach

Head coach

Interim

Interim

Coaches

1990

2000

2010

2020

Atlanta

11

Baltimore

3

Buffalo

11

Carolina

7

Dallas

9

Houston/

Tennessee

8

Jacksonville

10

New England

5

New Orleans

8

N.Y. Giants

10

Seattle

6

STL/

L.A. Rams

12

Washington

12

Sources: Post reporting, Sports Reference

13 NFL franchises haven't had a Black full-time head coach

Since 1990, those 13 teams have had 90 full-time coaches. None of them were Black, and just three of them were not White. Of those teams' 22 interim coaches, eight of them were Black.

Black:

White:

Other races:

Head coach

Head coach

Head coach

Interim

Interim

Coaches

1990

2000

2010

2020

Atlanta

11

Baltimore

3

Buffalo

11

Carolina

7

Dallas

9

Houston/

Tennessee

8

Jacksonville

10

New England

5

New Orleans

8

N.Y. Giants

10

Seattle

6

STL/

L.A. Rams

12

Washington

12

Sources: Post reporting, Sports Reference

13 NFL franchises haven't had a Black full-time head coach

Since 1990, those 13 teams have had 90 full-time coaches. None of them were Black, and just three of them were not White. Of those teams' 22 interim coaches, eight of them were Black.

Black:

White:

Other races:

Head coach

Head coach

Head coach

Interim

Interim

1990

2000

2010

2020

Coaches

Atlanta

11

Baltimore

3

Buffalo

11

Carolina

7

Dallas

9

Houston/

Tennessee

8

Jacksonville

10

New England

5

New Orleans

8

N.Y. Giants

10

Seattle

6

STL/

L.A. Rams

12

Washington

12

Sources: Post reporting, Sports Reference

In 2016, the Giants promoted McAdoo, who had never been a head coach at any level and had been a coordinator for just two seasons. McAdoo’s Giants went to the playoffs in his first season before they fired him after a 2-10 start to his second.

They replaced him in 2018 with Pat Shurmur, who had gone 9-23 over two seasons with the Browns in his prior head coaching experience, then produced the same record in two years with the Giants.

In 2020, they turned to Joe Judge, who had worked under Belichick as the Patriots’ special teams coordinator, a position that seldom leads directly to a head coaching job. Judge went 10-23 in two years.

Daboll, their current coach, took a more typical path, becoming a sought-after candidate while coordinating the Bills’ offense.

Comfort with candidates

In 1925, Tim Mara, a bookmaker, founded the Giants by paying a $500 admittance fee. In 1936, he gave Pittsburgh owner Art Rooney Sr. an insider tip on a racehorse. Rooney turned a $50,000 bet into a fortune that enabled the franchise to stay financially solvent until it established a foothold.

The Giants and Steelers have been passed down through two generations, and they have only strengthened their bonds over the decades. John Mara and Art Rooney II sit next to each other at every league meeting, as their fathers and grandfathers did. Mara’s brother Chris is the father of a famous actress. Her name is Rooney Mara.

Where the franchises have separated is their record on head coaching diversity. Dan Rooney, Art Sr.’s son, championed the rule that bears the family’s name and compels NFL teams to interview minority candidates for top coaching roles. In 2007, Rooney established clear criteria for his next coach: He wanted an energetic, youthful communicator with a defensive background. It helped him find Mike Tomlin, then the 34-year-old coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings. Tomlin, one of three current Black full-time head coaches, has won a Super Bowl and entered this season having never finished with a losing record.

[Perspective: Mike Tomlin shows how rare real opportunity is for Black coaches]

By comparison, the Giants have taken a seemingly scattershot approach. When they hired McAdoo, an offensive coach, their only interview with a Black candidate was with a defensive coordinator at a time when the NFL was trending toward putting offensive-minded coaches in charge.

Six years later, the Giants interviewed six candidates, five of whom had defensive backgrounds. Three of those — Flores, Patrick Graham and Leslie Frazier — are Black.

The Giants chose the only candidate with an offensive background: Daboll, who is White.

Rather than implementing a system that could blunt inherent bias, the Giants rely on gut feel and comfort with candidates, multiple people familiar with the process said, potentially allowing personal affinity to play a large role. When Mara interviewed Judge, he told the Athletic in 2021, “I could envision him standing in front of the team meeting room and grabbing the players’ attention and being a leader.”

People familiar with the team said it was unsurprising that leaders such as Mara relied on the connection they had with candidates similar to them.

“I would expect for someone who shares similarities to maybe identify more [with Giants executives],” said former Giants wide receiver David Tyree, a Super Bowl hero who from 2014 to 2020 worked in their front office as director of player development. “So maybe they relate better to some of the other White candidates. I don’t think that that’s evil. I think it’s a hindrance to progress.”

Those familiar with the hiring process in the NFL say it varies from team to team, which experts say fails to address baked-in bias. Owners and general managers often listen to influential figures willing to offer their recommendations: Powerful coaches such as Belichick and Giants legend Bill Parcells have become veritable kingmakers, pushing their promising assistants to team owners.

Rick Smith, who represents multiple coaches, said agents start reaching out behind the scenes as soon as it becomes clear that a team is looking for a new leader.

Both of those networks — head coaches and agents — are overwhelmingly White: Just 25 of the NFL’s 192 head coaches since 1990 have been Black, according to The Post’s analysis. The vast majority of head coaches are represented by White agents: Matt Smith, a Black agent who counts his father, Houston Texans Coach Lovie Smith, as a client is a notable exception.

Three of the Giants’ four recent coaching hires have been represented by the same high-powered agent, Bob LaMonte. Judge and Daboll previously worked for both Belichick and University of Alabama Coach Nick Saban.

As noted by a longtime NFL team executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Shurmur, Judge and Daboll — like John Mara — attended Catholic high schools, a trend he interpreted as a sign of Mara’s lean toward candidates with similar backgrounds. Coughlin, the team’s head coach for 12 seasons, also is Roman Catholic.

Experts say relying on insular networks leads to similar slates of candidates, even with the Rooney Rule — which largely has been regarded as inadequate to help increase diversity.

“Our networks tend to be homogenous, particularly White people’s networks. The people that owners are more likely to get referrals from are going to be White, and then the people that those people refer are also more likely to be White,” said Y-Vonne Hutchinson, CEO of ReadySet, a firm that specializes in diversity, equity and inclusion.

Within the Giants’ organization, their coordinator positions also have remained relatively White: Despite Mara’s advocacy for the Rooney Rule to be extended to coordinator positions, of the Giants’ 15 defensive coordinators since 1980, just four have been Black.

The number is even worse on the offensive side, which has been a dominant pipeline for head coaches: Since 1980, 13 of their 14 offensive coordinators have been White, with Jim Skipper serving as their most recent Black offensive coordinator from 1997 to 1999. But Skipper is among those who attribute the Giants’ hiring history to happenstance.

“They were all good people,” he said. “For them not ever hiring a Black head coach, that’s just something that happened. It’s nothing intentional — nothing at all. I was the first Black coordinator in the history of the franchise, and they were all open arms about it.”

The Giants say they’ve been trying to diversify their organization at all levels. Hanlon, the team spokesman, said they have established two committees dedicated to diversity — one with a rotating group of employees that reports to another with more senior executives.

But like nearly two-thirds of the NFL’s teams, the Giants have not hired a staff member dedicated exclusively to diversity, equity and inclusion — a baseline step that many in corporate America have taken as a safeguard against blind spots that promote unconscious bias.

“It shows it’s not a priority,” Hutchinson said. “Until the culture of the league changes, everything that we’re talking about right now is just tinkering on the outside right until the ownership is really bought into DEI.”

A diverse panel of judges

When the Giants set out on their coaching search after the 2015 season, they could point to Reese as a key Black decision-maker. The NFL and close watchers of the league have touted general managers as a rapidly diversifying group, with seven teams currently led by Black GMs and the Steelers having promoted Omar Khan, whose mother is from Honduras and whose father is from India.

But coaches such as Jackson have noted that the role is much less public-facing than that of head coaches.

The coach “is the face of the franchise,” Jackson said. “You hire a minority head coach, he’s going on all the billboards and all the stationery and everything that goes around the building, out to the public, everywhere. You got to feel comfortable with that, and I think that’s part of it.”

After Mara fired Reese in 2017, White men held the top spots in the organization — and were considered the key interviews to land top jobs.

When the organization was looking for a new general manager early this year after the retirement of Dave Gettleman, Ran Carthon, the 49ers’ director of player personnel, said he spoke via Zoom with the three men atop the organization’s hierarchy: co-owners Mara and Tisch; and Mara’s brother Chris, who is now a senior player personnel executive.

Carthon, the son of former player and coach Maurice Carthon, praised the Giants’ process. He said he felt he had a decent chance at the job, though he knew he was competing against others with more experience. The job eventually went to Schoen, an assistant general manager with the Bills.

“Sometimes that just is what it is — guys have more experience,” Ran Carthon said. “But I never once said I feel like I didn’t have an opportunity because of the color of my skin.”

Maurice Carthon watched the process unfold from a different perspective. He played fullback for the Giants in the 1980s and 1990s and then went into coaching, first serving as an assistant to Parcells, his coach with the Giants. He viewed Wellington Mara as a caring and progressive figure.

LEFT: The San Francisco 49ers' Ran Carthon interviewed for but didn't land the Giants' general manager job. (Jed Jacobsohn/AP) RIGHT: Ran Carthon's father, Maurice, played for the Giants and later was an assistant coach for the Kansas City Chiefs, among other NFL teams. (David Eulitt/Kansas City Star/Getty Images)

Maurice Carthon never got to be a head coach. But he passed down an NFL heritage to his son, just as Wellington Mara had passed down one to his. After Ran interviewed with John, Maurice’s optimism that his son would run the team he once played for evaporated.

“When I saw the makeup of everything in the [new] Giants, it’s like they get so many — their young family, kids and nephews and all that — they get so many of those guys in the organization,” he said. “So I guess, then, I think that it probably wasn’t enough room” for Ran.

Maurice Carthon had hoped that the next generation of the Giants would embrace progress in racial equity. When the time came, he saw only a lack of interest.

“I always respected Wellington Mara,” he said. “I can say that now. I can’t say that I sit here respecting his sons. But I know I always respected him.”

To increase diversity, the makeup of the interviewer panel at every level of the process matters as much as the interviewees, experts say.

“It’s not enough to have a diverse slate [of candidates],” Jonathan McBride, global managing partner of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Practice at executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, said in an email. “Organizations need to have a system that intervenes at multiple points in the hiring process to ensure a different outcome from start to finish.”

In a league with one non-White majority owner and 24 White general managers, the issue has gone overlooked. According to the agent who was advised to pull his Black clients from interviewing with the Giants, one of his clients has met with 14 team owners and executives on head coaching interviews — and just two of them have been Black. For the Giants, particularly after Reese’s departure, White members of management and ownership have played a primary role.

During his time in the Giants’ front office, Tyree found the team relied on a small group of decision-makers with similar viewpoints.

“With my background as a player, front office, NFL office, you know, I think I could have provided some insight,” he said. “Not to make it about me, but I think that is the only way that you can mitigate some of those blind spots.”

Longtime head athletic trainer Ronnie Barnes, who is Black, participated in interviews during the process that led to the hirings of Judge and Daboll, and former linebacker and current front-office executive Jessie Armstead and communications director Dion Dargin, who are Black, met with candidates this year, Hanlon said.

But in January 2020, Hanlon said, three candidates did not meet with any Black employees from the Giants before Judge’s hiring, which Hanlon attributed to scheduling conflicts that arose because some candidates were still coaching in the playoffs. For example, John Mara, front-office executive Kevin Abrams and Gettleman, all of whom are White, comprised the Giants’ contingent that traveled to Kansas City, Mo., to interview Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy before the job went to Judge.

This January, one of the Giants’ coaching interviews went to Graham, a Black assistant who also began his NFL rise as a Patriots staffer and whom Judge hired in 2020 as New York’s defensive coordinator. Despite the Giants’ 10-24 record under Judge, Graham attracted notice for his innovative schemes and strong results with underwhelming talent. His players nicknamed him “the Black Picasso,” likening his schemes to art.

The Vikings also interviewed Graham for their head coaching vacancy. In Minnesota, he spoke with what “seemed like 100 people,” he said, executives coming in and out of the room for nine hours, including recently hired general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. Asked if the Vikings had a more diverse array of people in the interviews than the Giants, Graham chuckled.

“Well, Kwesi is Black,” said Graham, now the Las Vegas Raiders’ defensive coordinator. “As soon as that happens, yeah. There could be two people in the room, and it would be.”

In the New York interview, Graham said he spoke with John and Chris Mara, Tisch and Schoen.

Graham said the Giants were good to him and he enjoyed living in New Jersey. He noted the Giants’ employment of Reese, but he mostly deflected when asked about the Giants’ commitment to diversity.

“I’ll say this: If you’re wondering, you just got to look at people’s track record,” he said. “I don’t know what else to do. It’s like me trying to figure out what someone does on third down — I just look at the tape.”

About this story

Additional reporting by Sally Jenkins, Gus Garcia-Roberts, Jerry Brewer and Emily Giambalvo. Graphics by Artur Galocha. Editing by Matt Rennie. Copy editing by Michael Petre. Photo editing by Toni L. Sandys. Design and development by Brianna Schroer and Joe Fox. Design editing by Virginia Singarayar. Project management by Wendy Galietta.